Fun with Oranges and Arabs

The funniest story I read in the past week was the one about a massive dust storm in Arizona. The weathermen dared call it a haboob, which is an Arabic term. Some Arizona residents were outraged. One even wrote, “How do they think our soldiers feel coming back to Arizona and hearing some Middle Eastern term?” No returning soldier has complained thus far, but perhaps they are temporarily preoccupied with other issues, such as PTSD, learning to walk with a prosthetic leg, or even finding a job in this economy.

They are bound to notice sooner or later, however. In the interests of making our troops—and civilian Islamophobes—comfortable, we probably should purge the language of Arabic influence. After all, we called sauerkraut “liberty cabbage” during World War I, and when we were miffed at France for not supporting the second Gulf War, we poured French wine down the sink and ate “freedom fries.”

Since we’re starting with food, we need to scrap marzipan and call it almond paste with sugar—uh-oh, sugar comes from Arabic, so let’s say evaporated cane juice instead. That way it even sounds healthier. Oranges are out—yes, it’s also from Arabic. I have no idea how to replace that word, or what to call the color in your child’s crayon box. And speaking of children, you’d better change the sign on your kid’s lemonade stand before you corrupt their little minds with foreign terms. Lemons, limes, and tangerines were named by Arabs.

We’ve got to rewrite our cookbooks, and get rid of artichokes, apricots, caraway seeds, saffron, sherbet, spinach, and tarragon. Hey, we didn’t like spinach anyway. It will be harder to do without coffee and alcohol.

Out of the kitchen and into the living room:  junk the divan, and stop calling that other thing a sofa. Use the word couch, even if it’s from (ugh) French. Check your closets, too. Clean out the sequins, sashes, your damask tablecloth, the gauze in the medicine cabinet, and anything made of cotton or muslin. That last word is a real no-no—it even sounds like “Muslim.”

I’m sure you know that algebra was invented by Arabs. It means “the ciphering,” but we can’t use the term cipher either. The Arabs even invented the numbering system we use, including zero. We should scrap it and return to a good old Western system. Try a problem in long division:  DLXXXIV ÷ XXXII. Oops, the result isn’t a whole number. Anybody know where to put a decimal point in Roman numerals?

The brightest stars in the sky were named by Arabs, but just because astronomers all over the world use those terms doesn’t mean Americans have to. We can auction off the naming rights to the highest bidder:  heavenly bodies such as Altair, Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Fomalhaut, and Rigel (the list goes on) might come to be called Exxon, Walmart, Ford, Disney, or even—Goldman-Sachs!

On the other hand, maybe I’ll stick to haboobs.